


you are my favor

by claquesous



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Pining, Tattoos, pre-Niall's death Ronan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-22
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 14:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4395677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claquesous/pseuds/claquesous
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gansey sighed. Ronan rolled his head toward Gansey and gave him an exaggerated sigh back. “What does that even mean?” Gansey side-eyed him, trying to decide how drunk he was, and said, “Not everything I say or do has a once-twice-sold Glendower meaning, you know.” Ronan snickered. “Yes it does.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. war paint

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: flippant use of "suicidal," language, alcohol, debatable drunk driving.

Ronan was a live wire, a dark stain on the golden brown landscape. He was even more enchanted by fire than Gansey had feared, and he was egging it on like a suicidal arsonist. He looked fiercely satisfied, sweating and shirtless and brandishing a cardboard torch. Gansey couldn’t help but let out a whoop of laughter. It was hard to maintain decorum with a fire two stories high stinging your eyes.

“Jesus, Ronan, put that down,” he yelped, still giggling despite himself. Ronan had hefted half a desk hanging out of the bonfire and Gansey didn’t know what he was trying to do with it, but he half expected to see his eyebrows burst into flames at any second.

Ronan just heaved it over its end into the fire, leaping back from a spray of sparks. Gansey was feeling a little outshone. Crew had left Gansey’s shoulders fashionably sloped, but Ronan was bulkier than made any sense at all for tennis, in season and out. He knew that it was just one of the things that kept Ronan sane, finding various ways to diffuse his ridiculous supply of kinetic energy, but it didn’t quite soothe Gansey’s pride.

Faint blue strobes and Ronan’s shout of “Cops!” distracted him from Ronan’s arms. Gansey turned toward the road, waving pleasantly at the police cruiser that rocked off the road into Monmouth’s parking lot. Unlike Ronan, police did not trigger his fight-or-flight and he could be polite.

Two officers got out of the vehicle and left the doors spread like the wings of an insect. “We’re gonna need you boys to put out this fire,” the skinny one said.

The brawny one was glaring at Ronan, who gave him a breakneck grin. “Fancy seeing you here, _Steve_.”

Gansey smiled, ignoring Ronan valiantly. “Do you mind if we finish up our demolition first?” He gestured at the building, trying to pretend Ronan hadn’t just said “I have your autograph on my wall!” to Steve. “I own this building and the lot and we’re clearing out the second floor. The junk we have left is too big for our cars. Desks, piles of plywood, you know. We’re almost through.” He fixed them with what would be puppy dog eyes if they left any room for negotiation, giving not-Steve the full brunt of it.

The bulky cop glowered and the scrawny one shrugged.

Gansey beamed aggressively at them. Positive reinforcement. “We actually need a little help," he said, and Ronan's mouth opened. "There are a few things too big for the two of us to handle.” His good-natured tone and self-deprecating smile identified himself as the weak link.

Ronan's mouth was still open, his eyebrows on the defensive. Gansey attributed the attitude to Ronan's fondness for cops, probably related to his fondness for speed limits. But at a jerk of Gansey’s head, Ronan trotted back into Monmouth and up the stairs. At a jerk of the smaller cop’s head, Steve grudgingly followed him up. Gansey and not-Steve shared a look like dog owners lamenting their charges’ tempers, and skinny cop joined Gansey companionably.

“The hell'd you buy this for?” he asked.

“School housing,” Gansey said, and saw that he had no need to specify which school. “I can sell this when I graduate, and it will be habitable by then. I wouldn’t be able to sell a dorm.”

The police officer nodded with approval. “Never thought of that.”

Ronan backed down the stairs with one end of a giant conference table, and with the help of the second officer tipped it into the fire. He thanked the officer with a smile made of shit.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Gansey said, clearly relieved Ronan and Steve had emerged in two separate pieces. Ronan’s feral grin widened. “We’ll put it out completely after it’s done its job.”

The cops nodded and bundled back into the car, and as they buzzed off like flies Ronan gave an incredulous laugh. “You and your fucking mouth.”

Gansey glared at him. “You and _your_ fucking mouth, you bastard!”

“I didn’t know you were gonna try and sweet talk them!” Ronan was alight with mischief and fire and there was no putting it out at this point.

“I’m good at it,” he shrugged, and wiped his clean hands on his cargo pants. "Let's go get some marshmallows."

Ronan grinned. He planted his hands on Gansey's shoulders and shoved him into the Pig, earning a fond grumble, and swung into the passenger seat. He thumped the roof of the car, Richard Gansey's loose cannon of a herald.

Gansey made Ronan stay in the car at the gas station because he looked positively feral. His shirt had not made it to the car, was probably a tuft of ash by now, and he was streaked with charcoal like war paint. A blinding smile reminded Gansey that Ronan looked wild but he was, at some fundamental level, buried deep beneath his defensive hostility, gentle.

Gansey tried to remember this smile later when Ronan was hollering the murder squash song at the top of his lungs, a beer bottle swinging from his fist. _Gentle. Ronan is gentle_ , he chanted slightly hysterically to himself as Ronan hurled the half empty beer bottle into the fire. Ronan growled and Gansey sighed in relief when it didn’t erupt into flames. Gansey emptied his own bottle.

Finally Ronan ran out of steam and sprawled into the grass beside Gansey, just inside the fire’s aura of heat. Everything was red and orange and pink, painting Ronan's heaving stomach. The heat curling off the fire made it look like Ronan was the searing hot thing. Gansey sighed.

Ronan rolled his head toward Gansey and gave him an exaggerated sigh back. “What does that even mean?”

Gansey side-eyed him, trying to decide how drunk he was, and said, “Not everything I say or do has a once-twice-sold Glendower meaning, you know.”

Ronan snickered. “Yes it does.” He squirmed in the grass like he _wanted_ to wake up with hives. Then Gansey remembered that nature was not a death threat or even a thorn in the side to most other people.

They had been themselves in the most primal sense today, wicked creatures of destruction and creation performing some Dionysian ritual to the gods of bankrupt mysterious manufacturers. With the taste of this burnt offering still thick on his tongue, Gansey felt more himself than he had in a while. He technically hadn’t made a scrap of progress toward Glendower today, but he felt like he had taken a large step away from Aglionby and mundanity and academia and everything that hunkered between him—them—and Glendower.

“Hey,” Gansey said, breaking the mostly-silence.

Ronan looked at him, all his edges razor sharp but soft as ash.

“You know, you’re part of this. Part of me. This isn’t just mine anymore. If it ever was.” Smoke and dirt stung his nose. Ronan’s heavy gaze stung his eyes.

“It is yours.”

Gansey opened his mouth, frowning, but Ronan added, so quietly, “I’m yours.”

His mouth remained open, but Ronan just took the stare and gave it back like there had been a mistake.

“It’s got nothing to do with man-hours or any of that shit. You are my favor.”

Gansey swallowed. Something about this made sense to him, felt correctly asymmetrical, but his logical self flinched at the realization that he didn’t return the particular feeling.

Ronan smiled faintly, reading his discomfort. “You don’t have to feel the same way. That doesn’t make you a douche.”

“Are you sure?” Gansey asked.

Ronan laughed at his genuine concern and smacked his leg. “You need another beer.”

“You don’t,” Gansey said, “if you’re driving home.”

Ronan waved him off. “I’ll be fine.”

Gansey frowned, sure Ronan actually meant it but not necessarily in accord. “Just stay over.”

Ronan leered at him adorably. “How forward of you.”

Gansey rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I know that’s usually a third date kind of thing, but... I’d do so much worse to keep you safe.”

Ronan’s grin of mischief turned a shade more sincere. “I know.” He lost his eyes in the darkening sky, leopard-spotted with clouds.

Gansey picked himself up and wasn’t sure whether he was drunk or not. Aglionby was less than five minutes away, so he wasn’t all that concerned, but he waited for Ronan to get up and held out his hands, palms up. Ronan’s hands came to hover over Gansey’s for less than half a second before he snatched them away again, Gansey’s hands whistling through empty air. Gansey scowled. They swapped. Ronan remained motionless for entirely too long and then slapped Gansey’s hands hard enough for an “Ow!”

“I’m driving,” Ronan said smugly, and held a hand out for the keys. A guiltily slightly-drunk Gansey was the only one who ever relinquished the keys to the Pig, so Ronan robbed him cheerfully every chance he got.

Gansey tossed them over and Ronan snagged them effortlessly. As alarming and illegal as Ronan’s driving was, it usually wasn’t dangerous. He even went the speed limit all the way back to school.

Ronan rolled into Gansey’s bed like he owned the place, which he basically did. Gansey’s roommate was still out, as he often was, so Gansey stripped his dried-sweat smelly shirt and pants, plucked a mint leaf, and flopped on the bed in threadbare sweatpants.

“Smells like fire,” Ronan said hungrily. Gansey could feel his hot breath on his cheek.

"Does it?" Gansey snickered. Maybe he was a little drunk. He rolled toward Ronan, who had never left his natural minimally clothed state. “So I found a park that’s near those piles of threes we found last month. And some ‘private property,’” he smiled with teeth, “that has no dwellings on it.”

Ronan nodded. “Time for some more exploring.”

“You need to make us another tape.” Gansey winced. “I don’t think I can take any more bagpipes.”

Ronan looked very offended.

“And ‘Chariots of Fire,’ Jesus Christ. Was that your idea or mine?”

“Yours.”

“I am so sorry.”

Ronan shrugged. “You don’t see me apologizing for my drinking songs.”

Gansey smiled flatly. “No, I don’t.”

Ronan blinked sleepily. There were fine motes of ash in his eyelashes. Gansey scuffed a hand through his coarse, dark hair, shaking more flakes of ash loose. “Do I have fire dandruff too?”

Ronan laughed, drawing a hand through Gansey’s hair in return. “Not anymore.”

The door banged open and Henry apologized loudly, but, in the way of drunk people or maybe just in the way of Henry, still marched right in.

“No, you’re fine,” Gansey said, sitting up. He swayed, and he and Henry exchanged the “Ah. We are equally drunk” look. “I just won’t let Ronan drive an hour home, so if you don’t mind…”

Henry shrugged. “Mi casa es su casa.”

Gansey gave him one of those _good dog_ smiles like the one he’d given the police officers earlier. It was hard to resist them, and Ronan could see that Henry Cheng was nothing if not vulnerable to Gansey’s considerable charm and lack of clothing.

“Smells like a barbeque in here,” Henry remarked.

“We had a bonfire,” Ronan said smugly.

“That explains the war paint,” Henry nodded.

Gansey observed that Ronan was smearing said war paint all over his white pillowcase.

“I thought I was gonna have to fight some cops,” Ronan said.

Gansey smacked him.

“Gansey vanquished them with words,” he added, voice shaking with laughter.

Henry grinned. “Your silver tongue comes in handy.”

“So does the silver credit card,” Gansey said wryly.

“Doesn’t help me much,” Ronan said.

Gansey gave him a look.

Ronan grinned sweetly, which just meant the razor edge of his smile was laced with poison.

“Not to poop on the party,” Henry said, “but we’ve got crew at five and I didn’t really sleep last night, so…”

“No problem, man.”

Henry smiled and disappeared into the bathroom.

“ _Five_?” Ronan asked, scandalized.

“Have you ever seen a Henrietta sun rise out of the river?” Gansey asked softly.

Ronan didn’t smartass him.

  



	2. a henrietta sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan is very gay and Gansey is very aware and neither of them cares what anybody else thinks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I took my sweet damn time with this. This is the first vaguely chronological thing I've written in years, I have to sit on shit for a while.

Ronan’s insomnia came in handy the next morning, for once in his life. Gansey and Henry’s bustling had dislodged him from his brittle sleep and he couldn't manage to piece it back together, so twenty minutes or so after they had gone, just as the birds were waking up, Ronan rolled out of bed and yanked on a jacket of Gansey’s. It looked ridiculous on him, slightly too small and not in a flattering way. He foraged around Gansey’s side of the room, found nothing, and shoved a pair of apples from Henry’s food stash into Gansey’s inadequate pockets.

He was the only one on campus not on the lake, which was probably good, because he probably wouldn’t even have been let into a McDonald’s with the charred pants, no shoes, and no shirt. He waded through the dew across the quad, begrudgingly admiring the school without its infestation of rich straight white boys. The silence was the most striking; even his grass-padded footsteps managed to come back at him from every direction. He was starting to wonder if he was headed for the right spot on the river, because there still was not a sound but the birds, but when he rounded the crew shed, he froze.

Gansey, even with his doe-eyed reverence, had not done the spectacle justice. The sky was a single plane of rose, peach, dust, not a single cloud breaking it up. The sun wasn’t up yet, but the effect of the backlit columns of boys, pushing and pulling in seamless, silent unison through the churning water iced with the colors of the sunrise, was in no way diminished. “Shit,” Ronan whistled through his teeth. Goosebumps that had little to do with the cold rose on his arms.

He climbed a tree leaning daringly out over the water and got to work on his apple as he watched the sweating, shirtless boys pumping themselves pornographically through the water. They were astonishingly quiet, like even they understood that this moment didn’t belong to them. Ronan felt intensely alive.

Alive, however, did not mean awake. After about fifteen minutes of greedily watching the river, he realized just how early it was, both in terms of the amount of sleep he’d had and how long he had to wait for the sun to properly rise. He was dozing, unable to properly sleep without falling out of the tree, when Gansey came up to his tree and knocked on the trunk.

“Isn’t it lovely?” he asked, sounding exhausted and satisfied.

Ronan smirked. He had no idea. He tossed him the apple he’d stolen from Henry. Gansey blinked at it in pleasant surprise and took a delicate bite out of it.

In unrelated news, Ronan was going to murder someone out of pure sexual frustration.

“Is that my jacket?”

“Duh.”

“Your mobster jacket is in my closet,” Gansey said, “clean.”

Ronan brightened. “I wondered where that was.”

Gansey side-eyed him. “You knew exactly where it was and that I’d wash it if it floated around long enough.”

Ronan shrugged noncommittally. “I suspected.”

Gansey sighed tragically. “And I can’t even avenge my mooched laundry because I feel guilty dumping it on your mother.”

Ronan grinned innocently and swung down from the tree, nearly kicking Gansey into the river. “What time is it?”

Gansey didn’t even check his phone. “6:30.”

“Fuck, man, I’m going back to bed.”

“Me too,” Gansey agreed, following him back toward the dorms. “Aren’t you glad you came, though?”

Ronan smirked. “I almost did,” he said, his voice about as straight as his face.

“Jesus, Ronan, it’s too early for your personality.”

Ronan grinned. “It’s too early for anything.”

Gansey grumbled in agreement.

“Does Cheng usually go back to the room after crew?”

Gansey’s eyebrow cocked. “Well, yeah, during the summer everyone does, why?”

“It’s definitely too early for his personality.”

Gansey chuckled.

The devil bespoken caught up with them and bumped shoulders with Gansey. Ronan walked faster.

“Chill, Lynch, we just burned like 600 calories.”

Just like that, the spell of predawn Aglionby was broken. Ronan sighed. He tuned out the other two, or maybe just Cheng, and concentrated on the dew between his toes and the shriveled mint leaves and orphaned erasers in the pockets of Gansey's jacket.

He was several dozen feet ahead of them by the time he got to the dorms, so he was dead asleep (or looking that way) by the time Cheng came fucking shouting down the hall.

Ronan fought a smirk as Cheng fell considerately silent. If he had his way, Cheng would do that every time he entered a room with Ronan Lynch in it.

A few minutes later, Gansey shoved him over with a bare shoulder, clearly unconvinced Ronan was asleep. Ronan passively resisted being moved, and turned to drape himself over Gansey. His sleep face was dissolving rapidly, but Gansey was already giggling. “Bastard, move over!”

“All you had to do was ask!” he grinned, and made room.

“You are such an asshole,” Gansey grumbled without any real ire.

“Children, children,” Henry chided. “Go the fuck to sleep.”

Ronan made a vaguely mean noise and Gansey headbutted his shoulder fondly. Ronan rolled onto his side with a huff and feel asleep with the soft, comforting weight of Gansey’s head between his shoulder blades.

* * *

When Henry's alarm went off at a decent hour, neither of the other two woke. Gansey's subconscious had long since blocked out whatever overly happy anthem Henry's phone screamed at 8 every morning, and Ronan woke for nothing but his own insomnia and occasionally the old-fashioned deafening beep of his childhood clock.

Henry studied them shamelessly for a moment, baffled by their intimacy and even more so by the baldness of it. He decided about once a week that they were not super gay for each other, but always managed to relent the next time he came home to them basically spooning. A strange relationship between strange boys moving at a strange pace. They hadn't even hung out last year. He shrugged and left for the summer internship his mother had guilted him into.

* * *

It wasn't until both of them had been awake for a good hour that Gansey finally removed his nose from Ronan's armpit and the rest of his body from the strangely comfortable configuration of too many feet of limbs for an extra long twin bed. Ronan didn't move, just curled up around the empty space Gansey's vacation left between his knees and chest. It was ten, the perfect luxury for Gansey and an early morning for Ronan.

"Give the fucking covers back," Ronan grumbled.

Gansey smiled. "They were on the floor when I woke up."

"Give them back," he repeated, clawing a hand blindly in Gansey's direction.

Gansey tossed the discarded blanket over Ronan's suddenly almost pitiful fetal lump of angst and shoulder blades. Ronan tossed himself over, burritoing himself in Gansey's blanket. He gave Gansey a doubtful look. “Where the fuck are you going?”

“Back to Monmouth, Gansey said. “Eventually.”

Ronan wrapped the covers another 180° around him in the process of rolling over. “Wake me up when you're done with your old man routine.”

Gansey mumbled assent as he got out his phone (probably to read the _New York_ fucking _Times_ ) and went to brush his teeth—before breakfast. Ronan once again reconsidered his choice of best friend, but fell asleep before he could once again come to the conclusion that he'd never made a better decision in his life.

* * *

“I think I’m gonna get a tattoo,” he said to Gansey a few days later in the middle of Monmouth, between nonchalant arcs of sweeping, like he was talking about getting a pet.

“Uh,” Gansey said. Apparently it had been too many days since they had done something dangerous. “How? Don’t you have to be 18?”

“Nope,” Ronan said. “But my legal guardian has to be present, which isn’t happening, so I’ll need Kavinsky anyway.”

Gansey sighed the sigh of realizing a battle had already been lost. He’d done research; this was not idle musing. “Well, will you let me come?”

Ronan snorted. “You’re basically my legal guardian.”

“Where are you going?”

Ronan answered through the teeth gnawing at the leather around his wrists. Gansey was beginning to think the leather was a functional choice. “Place in Charleston, does Celtic tattoos.” He had stopped sweeping to fix his peripheral vision on Gansey.

“That seems a little cliche,” Gansey said doubtfully.

“It won’t be,” Ronan assured him with a smirk.

Gansey sighed again, feeling another battle whoosh past him. “So when’s the appointment?”

Ronan shot him another smile, this one fond. “Saturday.” He resumed sweeping.

Gansey nodded thoughtfully. “Who else knows about this?”

Ronan continued to smile, smug. “Matthew. So by now, Mom and Declan.” He looked low-key ecstatic about it, so Gansey wasn’t as worried as he probably should have been. Ronan had raised his anxiety threshold quite a bit simply by thoroughly wearing it out.

"And I don't suppose anyone else gets a say in this?" Gansey mused.

Ronan cocked his head, the broom sliding to a halt. "What would your say be?"

Gansey shrugged. "What I'd warn you about is bad art, but you are the last person on earth who would get a bad tattoo."

Ronan smirked and resumed sweeping the gigantic open room. Gansey watched him carve a meandering path through the carpet of dust, leaving inscrutable hieroglyphics all over the room and gradually erasing them too.

“So when’re we putting a bed in this three-story dumpster?”

Gansey raised his eyebrows with a fond smile. “We?”

“You, we, whatever.”

He raised his eyebrows again at the pile of screws, dust bunnies, and dead insects piled at their feet. “We need to refloor the place. At least this story.” He swept his light, warm gaze over slowly metamorphosing warehouse. Ronan blended bafflingly well into the landscape of what would be Gansey’s months in Henrietta. That landscape was barely a stripe along the horizon, at this point, but Ronan wasn’t going anywhere. “And we need to replace a dozen or so windowpanes.”

Ronan scoffed. “The AC doesn’t even work, why bother?”

“And fix the AC. And put a functional toilet in here somewhere.”

Ronan scoffed. “You don’t need plumbing to piss.”

“I would like it. And running water is kind of necessary.”

Ronan scoffed. “Only if you’re planning to clean yourself.”

Gansey readied a hefty glare for Ronan but found him grinning easily.

“So you _don’t_ want me to sweep this shit into the stairwell,” he guessed.

“No, thank you, Ronan,” Gansey said pleasantly. “There’s a dustpan right there.”

Ronan scoffed.

 

 


	3. a constellation for you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For some reason it had not occurred to Ronan that a tattoo could possibly be as painful as reported. He could take getting socked in the face, easy. He could even take a kick to the balls without too much down time. But nobody is chill when getting their fingers slammed in a door, or their body hair ripped out of its pores by the thousands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah i swear these are not getting shorter on purpose
> 
> also: warning for the typical derogatory use of "pussy." the plan is for blue to flay them for this misogyny once she comes into the picture.

Saturday found Ronan in the unusual position of wholehearted regret. It was a very sudden realization. Declan’s reaction was definitely worth any amount of money, and the sprawling design the artist had rolled out before them had made Gansey and Ronan both swear reverently, but wow. He had not anticipated this… _nature_ of pain. _Jesus_ , it was like someone was drawing on him with a red hot safety pin that was electrocuting him one cell at a time. For some reason it had not occurred to him that a tattoo could possibly be as painful as reported. He could take getting socked in the face, easy. He could even take a kick to the balls without too much down time. But nobody is chill when getting their fingers slammed in a door, or their body hair ripped out of its pores by the thousands. Ronan felt similarly furious with pain and even more helpless, because there was no quitting now. The minute the needle bit into his skin, his fate was sealed. No _fucking_ way was he going to chicken after everybody knew this was happening. Besides, Ronan would put himself through plenty of shit for art that fantastic (in every way) on him—he just was not terribly fond of the Ronan who had scheduled the appointment. However, he knew he would ferociously enjoy being the Ronan _with_ the tattoo, so he refrained from punching the artist in the teeth or crying or passing out or any number of other variously unhelpful and/or embarrassing things.

Gansey watched Ronan's face flip the channel from uncomfortable to surprised to betrayed to furious to resolute and very narrowly managed not to laugh. Instead he casually patted Ronan's fist and let the vice of Ronan shaking fingers crush his.

“Alright?” asked the artist, a woman named Leona with half her head shaved and Celtic knots nestled in her stretched ears. Ronan grunted. Gansey looked at the tattoo, which had three lines. This was going to be a long day.

Gansey divided his attention between the time bomb on Ronan's face and the creature blooming like a bruise on Ronan's right shoulder. Gansey couldn't tell what was what, but he was sure that was intentional. He could make out eyes, wings, and Celtic knots, some woven of tree roots and roads, but none of the big picture yet. It looked like a spider web or a patch of mold, something organic and encroaching and vaguely unsettling. It was so _Ronan_ Gansey was mildly offended he had not been contacted as a reference, since clearly somebody else had spilled Ronan's darkest secrets into this tattoo.

“You were right,” Gansey congratulated Ronan finally. “This is most certainly not cliche.”

The artist laughed, pleased. “He said that was the top priority.”

Gansey grinned at Ronan, who snarled a little like a smile in reply. “Told you.”

“I thought you said this thing was $800.” Gansey gestured at the mess of ballpoint pen-looking stencil. “Smaller than I expected.”

Ronan choked out a laugh. “This is one session, dumbass.”

“Ah. Out of how many?”

“Three or four,” the artist said. “Not sure yet.”

Gansey raised his eyebrows. He did not say that he was not sure Ronan would last one session, let alone four. He’d save the teasing for when Ronan was swaggering around like a freshly shed serpent and immune to being called a pussy.

“Jesus shit,” Ronan grunted. He didn’t move, but the muscles in his back jumped to life, and apparently this was not helpful either.

“Cool it. Unless you want a wack-ass Celtic knot, and those are not pretty.”

Ronan grumbled into the massage table and crushed Gansey’s hand to a pulp for good measure. Gansey ruffled his hair with his intact hand.

“Keep doing that,” the artist said, head bent over his shoulder, aware only that Ronan had relaxed for the first time since she’d started the tattoo. Gansey bit back a laugh. Ronan was too pain-dazed to protest.

Two hours later, Ronan’s whole shoulder was swollen, pink, and shiny, and the web-like tattoo looked finished. Gansey couldn’t imagine Ronan walking around for months with a half-done looking tattoo, so it made sense.

Ronan sat up like he’d just been trampled while comatose. “Fuck,” he let out through his teeth.

Leona slapped his opposite shoulder companionably. “Did great, Ronan. Bring him next time.”

Ronan shot her a murderous look, but she only laughed. “Alright, leave this baby wrapped up for a few hours, wash it good with some antibacterial soap, and sleep on some shitty towels or something. This one’s gonna bleed like a bitch.” She went through the rest of the aftercare, which Gansey memorized because he could see that Ronan’s senses were occupied. Ronan turned over $250 and then some, and shook her hand with his unmutilated arm before they headed out.

The afternoon sunlight hit the tattoo like a slap through the ceran wrap and Ronan swore explosively, struggling to get his shirt back on.

“You are the scariest looking pussy I’ve ever met,” Gansey said.

If Ronan had possessed more than two middle fingers, he would have used them all to flip Gansey off.

* * *

Ronan whined and moaned every second until they walked in the door to his house. Declan, out of the goodness of his heart, obviously, had insisted they all see the tattoo the very second it was done, hoping to catch Ronan in visible pain, but it didn’t work. Gansey pulled up in front of the Barns and Ronan was all superior smiles and shoulder-flexing. Gansey could not even _imagine_ an eyeroll of sufficient magnitude.

Aurora loved it. Matthew declared it “Wicked!” Declan was begrudgingly impressed, if only by the amount of pain it had caused his brother. All and all, Ronan had definitely already gotten his money’s worth.

That night, after the best truly home-cooked meal Gansey had ever had, several card games that Matthew cheerfully lost to his brothers, after everybody else had gone to sleep or at least their rooms, Ronan dragged Gansey outside with a tent and sleeping bags. Possibly only one sleeping bag. They wrangled the tent up with increasingly sore knuckles and increasingly loud profanity and heard a window slam irritably shut. Ronan made Gansey lie down before uncovering the mesh skylight that made up most of the roof to the sky above them.

"Shit," Gansey said in awe.

Ronan agreed. “I wouldn’t bother with the tent, but…” Wasps. Mosquitos. Hornets. Ants. Bees. Inconveniences. Death. (The greatest inconvenience.) Leona would also probably kick his ass for rubbing his new tattoo in the dirt.

"Get down here," Gansey said after a moment and dragged Ronan's head onto the pillow. "Let's make up constellations."

Ronan grinned into the night. "I spy a dick."

"Of course you do," Gansey said with a content sigh.

He traced it with a finger anyway. It was no three-stroke urinal graffiti either. Gansey was impressed.

"Let's see," he murmured. "There, a raven." His finger traced the outspread wings of an indistinct shape that could frankly have been just about anything with wings.

"Of course," Ronan chuckled. "No, yeah, I see it," he said when Gansey banged an elbow into his arm.

“I see…” Night horrors.They hadn’t bothered him in a while. Ronan blinked them away. “A mouse.” He rummaged around in the sky for his mother's mouse constellation. “There. And you know how stars actually look like they’re burning if you look really hard? That means the mouse is alive and well.” He smiled wryly. “That’s what Mom used to tell me whenever I had nightmares, anyway.”

Gansey touched Ronan’s hand. “That’s lovely.”

“Yeah. Your turn.”

Gansey studied the sky intently. “I see an owl.” He drew it in the sky for Ronan, boy and bird regal and wild.

Ronan was silent for a few moments beside him. Gansey knocked their heads together gently and then turned to frown at Ronan. "You can't be tired already," he said. "All you've contributed is a—oh."

Ronan's upper lip barely grazed Gansey's bottom lip but it shut him up immediately. Gansey didn’t move, didn’t breathe for a moment. Ronan looked intently at him for a moment and pressed forward, and Gansey turned his head back to the sky in a split second of indecisive panic.

Ronan sighed, the warm, unadulterated scent of the Barns washing over Gansey.

“I’m sorry,” they said together.

Ronan half-smiled wistfully.

Gansey, suddenly afraid Ronan would vanish any second, pulled Ronan’s head onto his chest. It was a very long moment before he felt him relax somewhat.

Ronan muffled something into Gansey’s shirt.

“What?”

“I have a constellation for you.”

Gansey was not sure how he meant this until Ronan showed him a crown in the stars.

 


	4. ronan, shared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a shithole, compared to the places these two had lived in.
> 
> It was also Gansey’s favorite place in the world.

Gansey thought the pseudo-cuddling arrangement was a totally reasonable compromise between romantic and platonic, but his body was under a different impression, evidently, because he jerked awake in the middle of the night with Ronan’s cheek against his ferocious pulse, trying to stifle several politically incorrect noises.

Ronan rubbed his stomach in what could have been sympathy or post-nightmare etiquette. Gansey’s dick interpreted it unhelpfully.

Gansey managed a very uncute giggle. Ronan snickered in a way that meant he was very aware of what was going on.

“Shut up,” he hissed.

“I can fix that for you,” Ronan said, too straight and bold to be serious. 

Gansey sighed and rolled away from Ronan, who laughed and let him be until they both fell tentatively back asleep.

* * *

Somehow the episode in the middle of the night was what turned the yellow light green. Gansey and Ronan stumbled out of the tent well before the usual beginning of Ronan’s day, driven out of the baking tent into the chilly morning.

“Fucking Christ,” Ronan growled, his voice barely a scratch. “Gross.” He peeled his shirt off his his torso, which was glued to him with a combination of sweat and ink seeping out from under the disheveled plastic mantle Leona had taped to him.

Gansey lingered by the tent like he expected Ronan to take it down, then got the hint and followed Ronan into the house. The slightly less hot air of the better-ventilated house washed over them and they sighed in unison.

“God—”

“Good morning,” Aurora called from the kitchen.

“—dang,” Ronan said. “It’s hot. I’m taking a shower.”

Gansey followed him upstairs, eyes glued to his gnarly bleeding tattoo. Ink trickled out from under the plastic and down his back, looking unsettlingly like blood.

“That,” he said finally. “Is awesome. Like, awe-some. Worthy of awe.”

Ronan preened.

“How are you going to clean it? Can you reach it?”

Ronan shrugged, then frowned. “Yeah, now I think about it, the shower sounds like a torture device.”

Gansey turned him around and peeled the soiled plastic off.

“Fucking hell,” Ronan growled, sounding merely annoyed by the pain.

“I’ll help,” Gansey decided.

“Mr. Gansey!” Ronan snickered.

“Oh, shut up. Go run water.”

Gansey went downstairs for a plastic cup and a roll of paper towels, ignoring Declan’s look of despair from the kitchen.

Ronan was sitting in a half full tub, buck naked, which, obviously, but Gansey hadn’t thought that far ahead. He stood there looking at the wall a few seconds, told himself to fucking chill, it was a body, not even a foreign one, and knelt beside the tub.

“That looks uncomfortable,” Gansey said finally. An understatement: the skin was red, shiny, and raw, and the texture of it looked… wrong. It had, he supposed, been hole-punched a few hundred thousand times.

“No fucking shit,” Ronan said through his teeth. “Just get it over with.”

Gansey nodded and poured a cupful of water gingerly over the tattoo, and every muscle in Ronan’s back immediately stood out.

“Hot shit,” he growled. “Keep going.”

Gansey squirted the hand soap by the sink onto his hand and smoothed it over Ronan’s mangled shoulder. He was as careful as he could be, but Ronan still bit his lip until it bled. The water was gray by the time Gansey finished, with a few little pieces of what he guessed was skin floating around.

“Gross,” he said, and Ronan flinched. “The water,” Gansey clarified, “not the tattoo.”

Gansey stood up to head out and give him some privacy, and froze.

He’d been so focused on not giving Ronan weird looks that he hadn’t noticed until that moment that Ronan… didn’t have a dick. It wasn’t a small one he had missed at first, either; there was no penis. In fact, he was pretty sure that was a vagina. What?

Ronan laughed, sounding exhausted. “Did it seriously take you fifteen minutes of staring at my naked body to realize I’m trans?”

“I wasn’t staring at— _ that _ ,” Gansey said, floundering. “I was trying not to be—invasive!”

“Dude, it’s fine. A body’s a body. Mine’s just… been tampered with a little.” Ronan gave him a lopsided but, as far as Gansey could tell, genuine grin. “Now fuck off, I can wash the rest of myself.”

Gansey sputtered a little and left the bathroom, relieved but a little embarrassed by Ronan’s chuckling.

After he had a moment to replay all the foreshadowing he had missed—the scars on Ronan’s chest he’d never really thought about; several disproportionately upsetting police encounters Gansey had seen the aftermath of; Ronan’s confusingly regular doctors’ appointments—Gansey wondered whether he’d overreacted. He was just surprised, but he hoped Ronan didn’t think it was disgust, or anything like that.

Ronan came into his room, shorts on but shoulders dripping, offered the towel to Gansey, and presented his tattoo. Gansey patted it dry as gently as he could, mentally scouting three or four different conversational routes ranging from nonchalance to damage control.

Ronan preempted it. “It’s not a secret, it’s just…”

Gansey shook his head. “You don’t owe me your medical history,” he said. “I was just surprised.”

Ronan laughed, but Gansey didn’t think it sounded unusually bitter. “Clearly.”

“You’re Ronan,” he finally said with a shrug. “That’s all there is to it.”

Ronan’s shoulders sagged.

That’s all there was to it.

* * *

Gansey insisted on keeping them mostly inside for the first week or two while Ronan’s tattoo healed. Ronan only wrestled the compromise of access to Monmouth out of him by promising not to roll around in the filth.

Instead, they taught themselves how to solder and sort of fixed most of the wiring. That is, they got most of the lights on the second floor to come on at some point, not always when the switch was flipped. Ronan nearly electrocuted himself and Gansey badly burned six of his fingers, but Gansey had Ibuprofen and Neosporin, so all was well.

A few days later, they decided to replace the window panes themselves, which resulted in several stitch-worthy gashes that they treated with Band-aids, very lumpy window seals, and a few panes that were red for several weeks.

They were idiots. They did stupid, stupid shit. There was no such thing as the word “no” in Monmouth that summer. They probably racked up half a dozen near-death experiences between them by the time Gansey started sleeping there, most of them unrecognized for what they were.

But however they got there, two weeks later Gansey and Ronan stood largely unharmed, sweaty, sunburnt, and satisfied with their work, in the second floor doorway newly fitted with a lock. The lights were so unreliable they called the place haunted, and both kind of believed it was true. The toilet clogged like there was no tomorrow, so shits were taken in the yard or with no toilet paper and Gansey prayed to a different god every time he had to flush. There were five buckets, reduced from eighteen a week ago, that were on constant rain watch. Ronan would drink from them if Gansey didn’t keep an eye on him.

It was a shithole, compared to the places these two had lived in.

It was also Gansey’s favorite place in the world. It looked full of stories, and he probably wouldn’t ever find out what most of them were, but he would make stranger, better stories of his own with Ronan, stories that felt like dreams.

To Ronan, it did feel like a dream. Gansey was by definition the outside world, but he felt like he belonged in Ronan’s inside world. Gansey blended into his dreams, seemed right at home in the Barns like Declan never would. So, so, so many times, Ronan wanted to drag him home to the Barns and show him everything:  _ This! This is what we’re looking for! How do we find more? _

But Niall had always been stiff-necked and narrow-eyed about telling outsiders anything. Unless they were paying for it, Ronan would later find out, and even if they were, the less other people knew about the magnificent, awful things that bled from his father’s head, the better.

So Ronan kept his mouth shut. But he knew that it was not a coincidence that his mind burst with ravens whenever he had one of  _ those _ dreams, that he often woke with feathers and oddly carved stones and dandelions that whispered to him when he blew on them.

* * *

The night they put a lock on Monmouth’s door, Ronan Lynch returned to the Barns even later than usual, smelling of smoke and rust and mint and sweat. His father’s car was in the driveway, which put a twist in his gut. But then, like always, the thought of the sweet nothings he would whisper in their ears and the impossible nothings he would lay in their hands put a secretive smile on Ronan’s face. How long had he been gone this time? Three months? About fucking time.

He stole into the house like a thief, ever his father’s son, and a silhouette too solid to be Declan turned to face him.

“Dad,” Ronan said, and like always, the title seemed too mundane. Niall Lynch was a god and a devil and a dream. There was no word for that in any language.

“Ronan,” he said, and it sounded like he meant to say “home.”

* * *

The single most important variable of Ronan’s life was Niall’s presence. The second was Gansey’s presence. Those two facts determined where Ronan went at night, whether he ate, whether he got arrested, whether he woke up with sore knuckles in the morning.

Each person had their own kind of pull to them; Ronan’s mother’s, for example, was barely perceptible at the best of times, but the marks people like Richard Gansey III and Niall Lynch left on others were wildly out of proportion. Like their personness was denser, like they somehow contained  _ more _ . Ronan liked to think himself largely immune to these personal gravities, but it was bullshit and he knew it. Take Niall Lynch and Richard Gansey out of the picture and Ronan would dissipate like an atmosphere without a planet. When Niall was gone, Gansey was his planet. When Gansey was gone, Gansey had to find Niall Lynch if he wanted to find Ronan. Which is why Matthew tossed Ronan’s rattling phone at him over lunch.

“It’s Dick… Dick Dick,” Matthew dubiously read the caller ID, and Ronan snickered and took the phone.

“Ronan?” Gansey sounded confused, even though they’d made no plans and no promises.

“Remember Gansey?” Ronan asked his father with the barest hint of wryness.

“Is your dad back?” Gansey’s tone said,  _ Ah _ , and also,  _ Hmm _ . Ronan wasn’t even annoyed.

Niall smiled. “Of course.”

Aurora mirrored her husband’s pleasant-and-nothing-else smile. “He’s always welcome,” she reminded Ronan. Declan rolled his eyes in mild despair.

“Yeah, you should come to the Barns.” This picked Declan’s eyebrow up a bit; when he was home, Niall tended to monopolize every member of the family except Declan. This time, Ronan was being shared.

“See you in an hour.”

Ronan nodded, and Gansey hung up like he heard it.


End file.
